The Covenant (126 page)

“Buller told me yesterday we’d be ready to strike tomorrow.”

“It won’t happen. General Warren has this curious fixation that armies should be allowed to get into position and face each other for three or four days. Get the feel of contest.”

“We’ve been trying to get the feel of it for two months now,” Frank said. “Those poor devils in Ladysmith.”

“They’ve nothing to worry about. Buller heliographed them again yesterday that he’d be there within five days.”

“Any chance?” Frank asked.

“If Warren punches west through the Boer line, I’m sure we can make it. But if he swings over to Hill Two in the middle, we’ll be in deep trouble.”

“Would he do such a thing?”

“With these two generals, anything can happen.”

“Tonight we should pray,” Saltwood said, and he did.

It did not help. For days Warren plodded along until Buller, who had watched helplessly since giving the man an independent command, could no longer contain his anger. Riding over to Warren’s headquarters, he said gruffly, “For God’s sake, move!”

“There are thousands of Boers out there waiting.”

“There were only ten hundred when you started.”

“I’ve decided to go for Hill Two,” Warren said.

The young officer had been correct in his fears that these two generals would dissipate their great opportunity: the “ex-policeman” was swinging to his right to club the Boers on Spion Kop. With incomplete orders to the troops involved, the vast plans were scrapped and whole battalions were ordered to march right when they had planned to go left. What seemed incredible then, and even more so now, they were to attack a sizable hill that no one had scouted and for which only the roughest maps existed. This error could easily have been corrected had General Buller authorized his balloonist to go aloft, for the man was a skilled observer and from twelve hundred feet, his optimum operating level, could have informed the generals of exactly what lay ahead. Buller did not hold with balloons and other such nonsense, so this invaluable tool was not used; the troops would march up Spion Kop with no concept of where they were going or what they might face when they got there.

What was worse—much worse, as it turned out—General Warren kept his headquarters far to the west, which would have been reasonable
had the drive continued in that direction, while General Buller kept his far to the east, removed from everything. When Major Saltwood protested this wide separation of the two headquarters—seven miles with crude communications—Buller growled through his enormous mustache, “It’s his show. He’s in charge of the troops.”

“But you’re the commander-in-chief, sir.”

“Never meddle with another man’s fight.”

“But it’s your battle, sir.”

“It’s Warren’s day. He’s got the finest English troops to win the battle.”

Frank wanted to cry, “Then God save the empire.” But he did not. He rode the seven miles to General Warren’s headquarters, where he arrived in time to witness an incomprehensible performance.

Warren had in his command a brilliant, headstrong cavalry leader named Lord Dundonald, a charismatic type whom the older generals distrusted, and when this fiery chap, leading fifteen hundred of the finest mounted troops, was set loose on the left flank, he launched a glorious charge which quite neutralized Hill Three and gained access to an unpatrolled road along which Warren’s infantry could advance directly into Ladysmith. By this daring and gallant maneuver he opened the way to an English victory, and the younger officers were cheering when Frank reached their headquarters: “Dundonald’s done it! He said he would.”

But then Warren sprang into action. Gray with fury, he stormed into the room where the younger men were cheering and cried, “Bring that damned fool back here. We need cavalry to protect our oxen. Let him keep a few men on his damned road, but I want the rest back here in camp!” and on the spot he deputized Major Saltwood and two others to ride posthaste after the cavalry and bring them back. “Damned young fellows! Put them on a horse, they think they know everything.”

Saltwood, not being a member of General Warren’s force, was not afraid to confront him: “Sir, I believe Lord Dundonald should be allowed to hold the road, and we should rush men to ensure he keeps it.”

“He’ll come back here, and he’ll obey my orders. My God, I’ll take his horsemen away from him. Insubordination.”

So Frank Saltwood had the miserable task of riding west to inform the gallant young Lord Dundonald that he was to pull back the bulk of his men. On this day Dundonald had beaten off a series of Boer patrols in savage encounters; he had won a notable victory; but
now he must retreat. The burghers would win this segment of the battle without having fired a shot!

On the night of 23 January 1900 General Warren sent his men up the south face of Spion Kop; they were led by a major-general, but he was fifty-five years old, had weak legs and did not take easily to steep places, so that he had to be shoved up them by his troops. Poor man, he was soon dying from a shell fragment.

What ensued must have been orchestrated by some mad genius, because both Warren and Buller, from their separate headquarters, appointed different replacements to the vacant major-general’s slot. Unfortunately, communications collapsed and no one knew who was in charge. There were, as a consequence, two British officers conducting the fight, each unaware of the other and assuming that he was in supreme command.

Two additional officers were sent in to take charge, one by Buller, one by Warren, and once again each assumed that he was in sole command. One way or another, the hill now contained four commanders leading nineteen hundred of the empire’s finest, while another eighteen thousand were kept in reserve; they would be sorely needed as the terrible struggle developed, but no one would command them to march.

In grandeur General Buller sat in his tent like a sulking Achilles, out of contact with the progress of the battle and doing nothing to sort out the mess his “ex-policeman” was getting his men into. “It’s Warren’s fight,” he insisted when Saltwood galloped back from the other general’s camp, begging for clarifications.

On the other hand, Buller was not loath to intervene whenever a particularly brilliant idea occurred to him, and he issued commands that would have bewildered generals as quick-minded as Hannibal and Napoleon. As for Warren, he was a fool who moved at a snail’s pace, fighting a night battle on a hill he did not comprehend. Not once did he move to Spion Kop; not once did he try to see for himself the dreadful slaughter occurring there.

He issued some twenty crucial orders, half to one of his commanders on the hill, half to others battling toward it. A German observer watching this amazing battle said, “The English army is composed of ordinary soldiers who are lions of bravery led by officers
who are asses of stupidity.” And he said this before the two generals had an opportunity to display their true talents.

General de Groot chafed. Much against his counsel, his truncated commando was being held in reserve behind Spion Kop. “We’ll throw you in at the crucial moment,” he was told, but two more of his men, seeking action, had slipped away.

The scene behind the hill was extraordinary. Row after row of sleek Boer ponies stood with their halters tied to trees or rocks while their masters fought on foot up the steep hill. Some five hundred wagons huddled at a distance, field ambulances and Red Cross units outspanned among them, their oxen peacefully grazing. Near them waited the wives who had accompanied their husbands, and in one tent Sybilla de Groot tended such men as were dragged to her impromptu hospital ward. Other women helped their servants do the cooking, and from time to time everyone would stop to listen to the raging battle which was taking place less than a quarter of a mile from where they worked.

When, toward noon, General de Groot walked back through the dust to talk with his wife, the women learned that whereas the English troops had captured the top of the hill, they had placed their trench so poorly that the Boers had a good chance of taking it away from them. “Will there be many dead?” Sybilla asked.

“A great many,” the old man said.

“Will you be going up?”

“Soon as they set us free.”

“Be careful, Paulus,” she said as he shuffled back to the hill.

It was men of the Carolina Commando, from the small town east of Venloo, who won the honors for bravery this day. They were led by Commandant Henrik Prinsloo and a short, stocky veldkornet named Christoffel Steyn, almost as thick through the belly as he was tall; when Steyn ran forward, rolling from side to side, men muttered, “If he can do it, I can do it.” What he did was run straight through a heavy barrage to the top of Hill Three, a kopje opposite the summit of Spion Kop, where he positioned his men behind rocks so that they could fire directly into the side openings of the English trenches. This fat fellow, who had never fought before, could not believe that the highly trained English officers opposing him could have allowed him
to occupy this fatal hill, but he accepted his luck and ordered his men to increase their fire into the exposed English ranks.

Whole trenches were wiped out, not a single man surviving, and of ten dead soldiers, nine had been shot not through the front of their bodies, but through the side of the head. Christoffel Steyn’s men had made the difference, but they did so from a hill they should never have been able to occupy for as long as they did.

Why the ragged line of burghers was permitted to hold the strategic kopje was one of the disgraceful incidents of this battle. While eighteen thousand crack troops still remained in reserve, powerless to aid their brothers dying in such numbers on Spion Kop, a commander of the King’s Royal Rifles, on his own initiative, dispatched his two finest battalions, ordering them to rush another hill opposite to the one held by Steyn. If they were successful, they could drive Steyn out with gunfire, and thus save the men on Spion Kop.

It was an impossible ascent, almost straight up, in heat of day, with Boers firing down at them from above, but these brave men, goaded by their energetic officers, somehow made it to the top, drew much of the fire away from their exposed comrades, and began to batter the Carolina burghers. It was a triumph of courage and grit, giving the English their first victory of the day.

Saltwood, witnessing the triumph, hastened to inform General Buller, but when this confused leader heard that a commander of troops had acted on his own, and had, furthermore, split his men into two groups, he fell into a fury and began to heckle his commander. At this moment a message reached Buller, warning that the Boers were in such firm control that if the King’s Royal Rifles tried to cross over to Spion Kop, they would be annihilated.

“Bring them back down!” Buller fumed.

“Sir!” Saltwood objected. “They’ve performed a miracle. Let them stay.”

“They should never have been split into groups.”

The commander, seeing his general in such confusion, lost all confidence in the daring action and signaled his men to climb down: “Get off the hill! Come back immediately!” At first the men refused to believe that such a stupid order could have been issued, and one colonel refused to obey it. “Damn them all,” he shouted, whereupon a Boer bullet struck him below the heart, killing him instantly. The retreat began.

Night fell as the beleaguered soldiers on Spion Kop watched with dismay as the King’s Royal Rifles abandoned the neighboring hill. For a few more hours the officers on Spion Kop held their positions, but finally one of the finest commanders signaled a retreat. This heroic man, Colonel Thorneycroft, had been breveted general in the midst of the battle; he weighed about twenty stone—two hundred and eighty pounds—most of it hard muscle, and he was afraid of nothing. Only his courage had kept the trenches in English hands, despite the awful slaughter, but now he lost his nerve.

He led his brave men down the hill, conceding defeat, just as one of the other commanders was climbing up with fresh troops, hoping for victory. They passed in silence.

When the new commander reached the crest of Spion Kop, in darkness, he found an amazing situation: the Boers, who had faced tremendous fire that day, had decided, half an hour before General Thorneycroft began to evacuate troops down the hill, that Spion Kop could not be taken. The constant pressure of the English gunners had been more than even these Boers could absorb, and they had deserted the hill. They knew they were defeated.

In other words, two heroic armies who had fought as bravely as men could fight, had decided within fifteen minutes of each other that the day was lost. Their two retreats occupied the same moments. After deaths innumerable, Spion Kop was deserted.

The Englishman climbing up as Thorneycroft went down was the first to discover this; he was another of the four in command that tangled day, and now he had a chance to save the day for the English. All he had to do was rush back down the hill, signal his superior, General Warren, and convince him to send more troops scurrying back to the summit. Full victory rested in the hands of the English if only this officer could contact General Warren.

This could not be done. The officer framed an excellent message, calling for quick reinforcements to occupy the abandoned hill and explaining how victory was assured, but when he summoned the signalman and told him to use his night lantern to flash the good word to General Warren’s headquarters, the man said, “I have no paraffin.”

“Try the wick. It may burn. Even for one minute.”

The signalman lit his wick. It did not even sputter. For want of a thimbleful of kerosene, the fateful message was not sent. The Battle of Spion Kop was lost.

•  •  •

While those futile efforts were being made to get English soldiers back onto Spion Kop, on the northern side of the hill a few of the defeated Boers consulted at two in the morning concerning their fate, and as an occasional rifle shot echoed from some distant place where soldiers were nervous, they whispered in the darkness, “General de Groot, what did you think of the battle? Could we have won?”